Results of Contract Negotiations with Windstream for Voice and Data Service to Campus

It is always nice to share some good news. Our contract negotiations with Windstream for campus data and voice service went well. Here is the good news under the terms of a new three-year contract:

Data Bandwidth: Bandwidth to the campus will double from 200 to 400 Mbps in order to address the growth in internet use and associated audio/video traffic.

SIP Voice Services: 3 Mbps of this expanded data connection will be used for phone service to/from campus at a reduced cost over traditional PRI lines.

Data Connection Redundancy: A new backup data connection will be established using a small cellular tower. This data connection will bypass our primary ISP service and can be used to support critical business functions in the event of a network outage with Windstream.

Voice Circuit Redundancy: In addition to the new SIP connection to campus for voice traffic, a second PRI line will remain in service to address overflow and provide phone service in the event of an outage with our primary connection.

All of this will be accomplished at an annual savings of $8,052. We plan to finalize this agreement on Friday in order to ensure work is scheduled and completed in June prior to the return of students for fall semester. The savings can be used to shore up the growth in overall software/hardware licensing costs we are experiencing.

This summer will be a busy one as we also complete our campus transition to Office 365, Microsoft Lync, Bradford access control, and complete upgrades to our network core and our Moodle courseware system. Contract negotiations with the CampusEAI consortium continues to address mobile apps, portal, and Moodle provisioning services. We will share updates on these efforts and others when our planning team meets tomorrow.